Store Strategist Joins Software Firm

The man in charge of finding store locations for The Gap and Apple has joined a software company specializing in store procurement and development.

George Blankenship, who for the last two years oversaw the retail real estate procurement for the new branded stores of Apple Computer Inc. (Cupertino, Calif.) has joined Vectiv Corp. (Berkeley, Calif.) as a senior advisor. Vectiv software provides “enterprise store lifecycle management solutions” that enable retailers to better align their stores with their customer base.

Prior to Apple, Blankenship spent 20 years at The Gap (San Francisco), most recently as vp of real estate strategy. During his involvement with store location procurement and strategy, Gap expanded from 800 to over 3200 stores.

“I personally witnessed the benefits of using technology to maximize store procurement at Gap,” Blankenship said. “Due to overall costs and implementation time, outsourcing the management of this technology is a better decision than building it in-house.

“Make no mistake,” he continued, “retailers must leverage technology and have a clearly defined strategy with an efficient opening process in order to succeed in today's retail market.”

Vectiv software allows retailers to manage and execute activities related to rolling out new stores, changing formats of existing stores, relocating and, when appropriate, closing existing stores.